


You change me

by AmyriadfthINGs



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017)
Genre: Internal Monologue, M/M, POV Oliver, Prompt Fill, Scrabble Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-21 03:36:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13732314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmyriadfthINGs/pseuds/AmyriadfthINGs
Summary: Oliver is thinking.





	You change me

It's a risky gamble, Oliver knows.

He's playing with Elio's heart and, young as he is, with his very soul, it seems sometimes. (Those times when Elio is all heart, when it seems to expand outward and take over his body. When he is most painfully, wonderfully himself, a person as large as anyone could wish to be. When he is ready to claim, embrace, take Oliver into him whole.)

(Oliver doesn't want him to lose that ever, as inevitable as it is. Maybe if someone could retain that side of them, it would be Elio? Oliver wouldn't at least completely put it past him.)

Which is also to say, Oliver knows deep within him that he is at the same time, quite selfishly, also playing for Elio's heart. 

He wants and needs to be part of it: to have it, and to be had by it. Desperately the last bit. To be had by Elio. To slip inside him and be safe from what's outside. 

Only that can't be and he knows that. 

So, it's even crazier that he is putting his own heart, body, mind, soul, whatever, out there on the gambling table, for Elio to see and pick up and play with. 

Because, let's face it, he didn't really try that hard to keep things tame between them. He felt a bit silly even at the time about how easy he went. How he wasn't really acting the tough adult person in the room (field), sticking to his line in the sand (grass). He would have been more embarrassed about that total failure in Keeping up Boundaries, if he'd cared more. If they weren't silly, random, unrealistic-to-keep-up boundaries. If he hadn't been so helpless, so hopeless. If Elio hadn't been there, blocking his whole vision, sucking up all his attention, demanding all of him, and if he hadn't already sunken willingly across the damn line (oh, was it sweet, what waited for him on the other side)... If, if, if. It's all irrelevant. 

To be clear, he can't be queer. He can never be that. It's not something that could ever be real. A possibility. Not ever. Not in the world as it is, not in the world he knows and that made him.

He can't even see it changing. 

To go out on a date with a man. He couldn't picture it, really. 

But if his thoughts ever dare to touch the subject, he always pictures a proverbial mob finding him, sooner or later. It shows up wearing the faces of his family, his college friends, the odd professor, neighbors from his childhood, probably long dead and gone, total strangers, strangers he has yet to meet. 

They come to bring him back into their midst, promising him full redemption, to forgive and forget, relief, let's not talk about this ever again, moving on, be safe.

Going on a date with a woman is much easier. 

Being out in the open in a surrounding that is approving and accepting. That smiles at his choice with a benevolent nod.

It's like he's two different people in that respect. Or as if there are two different worlds. Only there aren't.

Anyway, it's not like he's at that age anymore where he can leave all of him out there for the world or a lover to see, is he? (Has he ever been that age, a small unbidden voice asks, has he ever truly been Elio's age?)

No, he couldnt have. He never was. His house was so different from Elio's, growing up, Oliver thinks, with painful longing for something he never had and will never know. Elio is so lucky.

(He can still hope to provide such a home to someone in the future, can't he? He hopes he could be that kind of parent in the face of all probability of turning into his own parents. No. Never that.)

This summer is in itself a museum piece already, Oliver thinks.

It's bound to fade from memory, isn't it, from his being, from his person, his heart; with time. 

It's going to be a memento of this Oliver, wearing a little tag and referring to a table of facts and analysis next to his glass case, and it will tell of what he's letting himself be and feel for a few weeks. But really of what Elio demanded, formed, willed into shape with his hands, looks, words, brain, mouth. Made by Elio.

(It was always there underneath. It is always there. Now it will always be there. It would have anyway.)

Oliver rises from his desk to leave these increasingly uncomfortable soul-baring musings behind and to seek out the garden and sunnier thoughts of nothing, hopefully. (Sure.)

At that moment, Elio passes the open doors to the hallway, an impassive expression on his face, eyes lingering on him with no sign of acknowledgement, until the last second: a tiny nod, a quirk to his mouth, carelessly ambling out of his field of vision, hands behind his back. 

Oliver feels something inside him quiver, a thrillingly unknown part of him reacting. He feels like he's going insane, hysterical laughter bubbling up inside, contained for now. 

Not for the first time he wonders what Elio could do to him, and if it's not long done already.


End file.
